


24k magic

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: Bruno Mars (Musician), Uptown Funk - Fandom
Genre: #blessed, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Bruno 'Extra' Mars, Julio Gets the Stretch, Julio Serves That Scampi, M/M, Magical Realism, Mutual Pining, Pining, RPF, Song: Uptown Funk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 23:25:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17151029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: It was a year of death and memory: the year of hemorrhagic fever and the killing of Michael Brown, of the annexation of Crimea and the coming night, of enormous pain and the sinking of theSewol, of the canonization of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini in Rome and the crowning of Felipe VI in Barcelona. In this year, between the frequent absences of his personal wizard Julio de Orellana, Bruno Mars, who also had many names, lived in New York City, wore a pink sport coat, and released the hit lead single Uptown Funk.





	24k magic

**Author's Note:**

> started as a joke now we here
> 
> merry christmas, C. <3

It was a year of living dangerously—that is, of other people living dangerously, and of Juan José Julio Xóchihua Ciro de Orellana being called away again and again to attend the resulting funerals or smooth over the consequences, as he did in April when he flew southwards into spring to help his father and brothers soothe the iguana-serpent of Bahía Vizcaína, awakened once more on this side of the millennium by the poor choices of Juan Emilio Cristóbal Márquez, the wizard of Miami. It was a year of death and memory: the year of hemorrhagic fever and the killing of Michael Brown, of the annexation of Crimea and the coming night, of enormous pain and the sinking of the _Sewol_ , of the canonization of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini in Rome and the crowning of Felipe VI in Barcelona. In this year, between the frequent absences of his personal wizard Julio de Orellana, Bruno Mars, who also had many names, lived in New York City, wore a pink sport coat, and released the hit lead single Uptown Funk.

In this year of calamity, of the destruction of the Brazilian futebol team by merciless forces of the Old World, Bruno Mars headlined the forty-eighth Super Bowl and danced beautifully and hypnotically to the delight of millions. Eleven months later, he lost his voice.

So it was that Julio de Orellana returned to New York, bracing himself against the chill of January and the cold, unknown new year, and found the penthouse draped in silence.

The penthouse was heated to tropical extremes. Bruno wore on his small body a robe of pure silk striped like the pelt of a tiger, open to the waist, and on his feet, sheepskin slippers dyed in gentle lavender. His legs were crossed at the ankle, his hand toyed with the stem of a wine glass as he gazed at the city lights below, and the loose bend of his wrist was elegance itself. He said nothing in greeting as Julio entered, laden with bags of takeout, though he smiled, and Julio felt warmed by it.

The silence continued as Julio laid out a supper of Sichuan cold dishes, punctuated by the soft noises of plastic containers against the marble tabletop and then the soft noises of their mouths as they chewed and swallowed and hissed against the numbing pain of the peppercorns, which seemed to coat their tongues with static. Still Julio remained blithe and unworried, until his phone buzzed in his pocket and he laid it upon the table—

 _Bruno, 20:36:32  
_welcome back hoolio

 _20:36:33  
_how was your flight

Julio slid his phone to the side and looked up. “Something is wrong,” he said.

Bruno merely looked at him, wide-eyed and guileless, and shrugged.

“Why won’t you speak?” Julio said.

 _Bruno, 20:37:42  
_just resting my voice, no biggie

“Pajero,” Julio said. “What happened? I can fix it. Say my name. You know who I am.”

And Bruno looked at him unhappily and said, “Julio,” and his voice was a croak, and as it issued forth from his throat so too did a small frog, black and shining, banded with poison yellow.

Julio shouted, trapping the frog beneath the lid of a container, then looked across the table in dismay, for Bruno had shouted too at the appearance of the frog, and as he did, a golden coin had dropped from his mouth onto the marble and spun recklessly in the space between his spread hands.

Julio picked it up. It was an arcade token.

“How long has this been going on?” he said, and his voice, like the token, was dull and tarnished.

 _idk like a week_ , Bruno said, and with a sigh that deposited onto the table a plastic bead the exact neon color of a hi-vis safety vest, he stood and led Julio to the kitchen island, where he had stowed all the things he had spoken into the world. With the frog as a baffling aberration, none of it was alive, and none of it was magical. It was unquestionably all garbage, Julio thought, staring into the drawer: detritus from sea and street, unwanted even by the grossly materialistic rats of New York, who were voracious in their appetites and undiscerning in their tastes. He counted six pieces of Lego in canary colors, someone else’s gum wadded back up in its wrapper, smelling vaguely of artificial banana and very real vomit, and even a bottle cap. Most worrying of these items was a piece of beach glass, turned creamy with age. Julio felt the smoothed edges and held it to his eye, quizzing, but he saw nothing through its murky center, neither seascape nor leering lamprey’s mouth.

 _maybe two weeks_ , Bruno amended, as Julio continued to run his fingers through the mounds of trash, glaring at each piece in its turn, trying to understand what he was touching. _okay, three._

His phone buzzed a fourth time.

 _it kinda hurts to talk_ , Bruno said.

Julio left the apartment immediately to interrogate the oysters that lined the edges of the city, but they only let out cries as jagged and dark as their shells and spat microplastics at him in soggy volleys. Julio next wrestled the witch of the Hudson from her lair in the winter water, lashing the Financial District with sleet and ice, and demanded the return of Bruno Mars’ voice as she lay cursing him along the river walk, sodden and malevolent beneath the distant green shadow of Lady Liberty. But she could not return his voice, for she had not taken it. So Julio limped home, stung by her magic, drenched to the bone, and frozen to his very heart by unfathomable questions. He found the frog still domed beneath the container and Bruno asleep in bed, his skin and hair damp, and the bathroom floor pristine, save for the puddled silk of the robe: Bruno had not tried to sing in the shower. It had been a year of lawlessness and disdain, and all customs had been broken, broken indeed under his very nose. He had been careless.

He traveled to New York University the next morning, taking the frog with him in a washed noodle carton, courteous at all times but refusing its overtures of conversation. There, Professor Radha Kale, the East Coast’s eminent herpetologist and tuatara enthusiast, examined the frog and deemed it to be both real and perishingly rare: the first of its species to be seen by human eyes. Julio placed it into her care and hastened to the office of the wizard of Manhattan, who had little patience and even less advice. Harsh words were spoken between them, words the wizard of Manhattan would come to regret in time.

Julio stormed north to the restaurant El Guanaco, where he threw himself down at a corner table and began tearing into pupusas stuffed to bursting with loroco flowers and cheese, seething under the terrified stare of the abuela behind the counter and the humming electric undulation of the modern wards of Washington Heights. These began to fade at 155th Street, though the older lines continued, undiminished, sweeping nearly twenty blocks to the south. Though severed from them by a shell of concrete, he still felt their power, tethers running deep in the earth to an ancestral fount of magic. Far from calming his nerves, however, their presence only agitated him further. If only he could reach into the ground to grasp these protections, to weave them together and wrap them about the shoulders of Bruno Mars like a heavy down-filled coat, then he would feel soothed. But the use of these energies was lost, lost even to the wizards of the city, who had chosen in their powerlessness and arrogance to draw new lines over them, sealing them away forever.

As the last tangy morsels burned to cinders within the fires of his rage and frustration, Julio breathed deeply and thought about calling his father for guidance. He decided against it, in the end, sipping sweetened black coffee: there was enough madness in Miami at present to occupy ten Diego de Orellanas, and he could not in good conscience add to his father’s troubles with his own failures.

He closed his contacts list and saw there was a new message from Bruno.

 _come on, man_ , Bruno had written. _relax its probably just a cold or something_

 _It is so very obviously not just a cold_ , Julio replied with both speed and precision; he had long ago taught the neural network of his keyboard to read his thoughts, and it had rewarded him by developing sound grammatical practices and a splendid English vocabulary, one exceeding his own at times. _Don’t worry, Mr. Mars. I’m on the case._

Bruno’s answer was long delayed, finally diving through the gap between the doors of the C train as it paused at the 168th Street station. _I told you to call me Bruno_.

In the weeks that followed, Julio traveled far and wide across the city, seeking answers from friend and foe alike. In between these little skirmishes and riddle games with the sparrow queen of the Bronx or the two-headed armored roaches of the southwest corner of Queensboro Plaza station, he fed Bruno every home remedy he could Google or remember: common teas steeped with rare honeys to soothe the agitations of the throat; tablespoons of olive oil wherein second- and third-generation Italian magicians had suspended certain minerals and herbs, to boost vitality; salts of every color and geographic origin, to exorcise an equally diverse population of demons; plain white long-grained rice over which he had waved ceremonial rods of wheat and barley, to purify the spirit or perhaps stupefy it with carbohydrates; and an imported and canned Nordic fish, so fermented that its pulverized flesh had turned to pure stinging ammonia, to what purpose, Julio did not know. The preparation of this last item had led Bruno to evacuate the penthouse in great disorder, shouting and swearing a trail of peculiar garbage down the front of his shirt, no less pungent than the dish over which Julio was laboring. After the Surströmming Incident, Julio tried no more remedies; or rather he was barred from doing so, both by Bruno and by building management.

One morning, reading the signs in the sidewalk, he took Bruno to a botánica in East Harlem, where a gum-chewing teenager with cheekbones painted in iridescent glitter made Bruno recite the opening lines of many of his hit songs.

“This hit, that ice cold, Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold,” Bruno said dully, littering the countertop with the crumpled gold foil of several used scratch cards, the yellow band of a mostly eaten ring pop, and what looked to be one half of a pair of false eyelashes, gold-dusted as well.

“Weird,” pronounced the teenager, who was none other than Acindina Valeria Irizarry-Jones, now in her third life as the elected eternal alderwitch of 97th Street. She drummed her long sparkling fingernails on the counter. “Keep going.”

“Take a sip,” Bruno said, disgorging a mouthful of pistachio shells. “Sign the check—”

Julio’s phone lit up. He glanced at it.

 _wtf man_ , Bruno had typed. _R we gonna go thru my entire discog w this kid Lets just go home we gotta pack_

Julio frowned.

A second message arrived.

_correction U gotta pack_

“Go on,” Acindina said, sounding bored. She was also texting, absently, with her left hand. Her right hand stroked her chin, and the tips of her acrylic fingernails rubbed together, making a noise like shards of bone being poured from a soft suede bag.

“Julio, get—” Bruno said, and stopped. He rolled his eyes, pushed a finger between his lips and his teeth, and fished out an earring, a small golden hoop. “Julio—”

“Oh?” muttered Acindina, as Bruno dribbled out a malformed pearl. She pushed her phone to the side and leaned forward.

“Get the stretch,” Bruno said, and Julio raised his middle finger at him, none too carefully, causing the candles in the shelves behind Acindina to rattle and a somersault of birds in the trees outside. It was a sore point between them, for Julio, who could commune with the meandering ivy, understand the mournful cooing of all doves and pigeons, and surround himself in every season with the breath of spring, had eleven points on his license and could not drive.

Bruno completed his recital, spitting junk into the plastic shopping bag that Acindina held open for them. For minutes they sat together in silence, Bruno tapping the metallic magenta sole of his monk-strap shoe in agitation against the tile, while Acindina meditated over the contents.

“No,” she said finally, “I cannot help you.”

 _jeeeeeezus_ , Bruno said.

Julio thanked her. They rose to depart. Bruno moved swiftly and elegantly past the hanging bundles of herbs and the glistening glass votives, with a poise Julio tried to emulate but could not feel, could not, for his heart was caught in a net in his ribs, beating wildly out of rhythm. If Acindina Valeria, with her two and a half lives of experience, her mad ruthlessness, her fortress of botanical remedies, could not help them…

He ushered Bruno into his coat and swept him to the curb, where a limousine materialized as though summoned; and it had been, for Julio had summoned it.

“Wait,” said Acindina, catching Julio by the arm and pinning him with the same silver stare that had slain the mafioso Maranzano at the end of the wasting War of the Castellemarese and laid the curse of painful metastasizing death upon all his successors. “Wait, Aurelius,” she said. “There is something interesting about this.”

“Indeed?” Julio replied, startled into formality. He did not say, _The man is coughing up garbage from the bottom of the sea. He is summoning forth debris from the unknowable, voracious, grinding center of the Great Pacific gyre. Surely this, in itself, is interesting enough._

“Be careful,” Acindina said. She closed her eyes, releasing him; he staggered as the strength returned to his body. “Be careful: it may be contagious.”

That was all.

They drove away from Harlem.

 

The day of their flight to Los Angeles dawned bright and clear. Julio was no closer to a solution. Sleepless, maddened, he escorted Bruno and his many suitcases of clothing, shoes, and musical equipment downtown in a limousine that evaporated into the L.A. smog once its purpose had been fulfilled. While Bruno strummed idly, first on an Armor Orihalcon Irmor guitar and then a lyre with gilded tips, Julio cancelled his many radio and television appearances, pleading first a sore throat and then nodules on the vocal cords.

 _hoolio don’t make it sound so serious_ , Bruno said.

“It _is_ serious,” Julio said.

_yeah but you’re making it sound like I have voice cancer_

Pause.

_oh my god maybe its voice cancer_

“That’s not a thing,” Julio said.

 _ok so karma_ , Bruno said. _trash talked too much n look what happened_

“Who would dare?” Julio said furiously, rattling the fixtures in his anger. “Who would dare?”

“Julio,” Bruno said, shocked, aloud, and he spat a guitar pick into his hand.

Julio examined it, set it between his teeth, gnawed on it. It was solid gold and engraved, bearing the initials of a stranger and the remnants of a cheaper chain: a lost or discarded gift.

 _sweet_ , said Bruno. _See Julio it aint all that bad_

Leaving Bruno sequestered in his hotel room, toying with the golden pick, Julio ventured into the orange sunset, bearing with him both Bruno’s apologies and a new song for the consideration of his dining partner. In the few days before their departure from New York, Bruno had, in true Bruno fashion, decided to capitalize on his inability to speak and increased reclusiveness to produce scrolls of song lyrics so voluminous they began to replace the carpets and bedsheets of his penthouse and indeed to pour forth from the windows. Julio had chased these with a magical net, at first in an attempt to tidy and then purely for Bruno’s amusement. He had, in due course, given up and had collected from the floor all the fluttering papers marked _For Adam_. He carried these now, in a bundle tied precisely with a soft satin ribbon, beneath his arm.

Two hours later, surrounded by the warm white fixtures and natural wood tables of Café Gratitude, opposite the warm and wholesome, grinning, handsome countenance of Adam Levine, Julio poked ungratefully at the remnants of his tempeh Caesar wrap, which had spilled out of their casing. Bruno’s absence was all well and good, for Julio had wanted to consult Adam, who—in addition to being a friend—was also a contestant coach and celebrity judge on the reality television show, The Voice, about The Voice. Bruno’s voice, that was.

He laid out the circumstances over vegan macrobiotic food, reenacting certain incidents and frustrations with so much force that he spattered the table with cashew Caesar dressing and Brazil nut parmesan and lightly enchanted the wood grain. Adam looked on this cavalier dismantling and unbalancing of whole and balanced foods in mild dismay but otherwise listened attentively.

“Do you think it was the dragon?” he said, when at last Julio had come to the end of his tale.

Julio shook his head. It had been arrogant of Bruno to boast of his inner fire in song, yes, but he remembered his final conversation with the dragon, who had seemed sincere enough in its desire to retire and spend the remainder of its days living quietly in the mud pools of New Zealand, savoring mineral-dusted geothermal moss, manuka, and monoao. If the power of its reptilian hatred were strong enough to reach halfway around the earth, then there would be more to worry about than just the loss of the voice of Bruno Mars, or so his father, Diego de Orellana, would say; and also, Diego would say, _My boy, you have lost your sense of proportion, what is the voice of one man when the lives of billions hang in balance?_

But it could not have been the dragon. What use would a dragon, concerned only with inner fire, have for a curse on the voice of an enemy? Julio did not say this aloud to Adam Levine, now sipping dreamy-eyed at a green juice made of the pulp of aloe and cactus.

He said only, “Nah, man, the dragon was chill.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess.” Adam leaned forward. “So have you kissed him yet?”

“What?” said Julio, while Adam’s words sank into the pit of his stomach like a coin plummeting into a wishing well, a spark of silver spinning and spinning through the green and murky depths, at last coming to settle in the mud and muck. “We’re just friends. He’s my boss. I would never—”

“That’s how they break curses, isn’t it?” Adam said. “With kisses.”

“ _True_ love’s kisses, Adam,” Julio said. “And who’s _they_? Disney? No seas maje.”

“Dude, you went to war with a _river_ ,” Adam countered, “didn’t even stop to think about it, did you, you just strolled up to the bank in the middle of the night and threw _down_.”

That much was true. Earlier, Julio had recounted his struggle with the witch of the Hudson, wincing already in the retelling; it meant, he now realized, that he could never again walk along the river unguarded, for he had humiliated the witch in her bailiwick, in plain sight of her subjects, and she would, unlike any geriatric dragon, bear the grudge as long as her bracken-choked heart continued to beat. His father would have words to say about this, too, and his words would fill Julio with burning shame.

Draining his glass, Adam continued, “That’s love, man, pure love. And insanity, too.”

“Above and beyond, that’s my motto,” Julio said lightly in response.

That much was a lie. Julio, whose people hailed from Miami, and before that the department of Sonsonate, El Salvador, in what was once Itzalku, the City of Obsidian Houses and the Place of Crystal Waters, in the shadow of the volcano, had taken his grandfather’s problematically conquistadorial motto for his own: _Woe unto them that put darkness for light._

“Seems like above and beyond would cover a kiss,” said Adam Levine. Julio laughed at him, a laugh that stopped short of his eyes.

There were some cousins of his who had sworn themselves to a more practical outlook, one well-suited to the vines of the family that had emerged from both Moorish and Mexican deserts and intertwined in California: _Saca agua de las piedras_.

It was these cousins who had once pledged to squeeze water from stones, now living in Los Angeles, to whom Julio turned in desperation once his awkward supper with Adam Levine was concluded. But the eldest of his mother’s sister’s sons, Alejandro, responded only that he was no longer a wizard, and indeed had never been a wizard, so help him God: the talent had always been Melisa’s, and it was to Melisa, youngest of his mother’s sister’s daughters, that Julio must take his petition and his _caso extraño_. Melisa, for her part, said that she had given up witchery; she had gone into real estate, which, though involving a subtle and cunning magic of its own, was of no use to Julio in his investigation of the current predicament of Bruno Mars.

He wandered disconsolately back to the Villa Sophia, his gloom as deep as that of the evening. The Hollywood Sign was illuminated at the crest of the hill, three miles away at the end of a pleasant trail. He could feel its strange, malevolent hum against his skin, like a flickering light at the end of a long and dark and abandoned corridor. There was warmth there, too, and great splendor, but the stark white lettering made him uneasy, as it always did each time he accompanied Bruno to the Sunset Strip. Somewhere in the mountains, the wind was sighing. Julio sighed with it.

 _He had never thought about kissing Bruno._ That much was a lie, again, though whether the lie had more or less decaying power because it remained unsaid was unclear to Julio. He _had_ thought about it and often. Many had. There was a certain magnetism to Bruno, to his every movement and gesture, that invited desire: the desire of multitudes, not just of Julio, who, unlike his coward-cousin Alejandro, _was_ and had always been a wizard and should have been immune. But he was not immune; indeed, he was enfeebled, he was vulnerable; he had imagined it, on many a moonlit and sultry night; he had thought of drawing Bruno toward him, of stopping his voice with a kiss.

The idea struck him, rooting his feet to the ground, sending microscopic shocks into the pavement, which buckled like crackle-lacquer at the intrusion of unexpected magic. He let it wash over him, horrible in both its newness and its simplicity. Perhaps it was he, Julio de Orellana, who had laid the curse, the breaking of which would now require something far more intensive than amulets and ceremonial chanting: it would require _introspection_.

No, he thought. Many had loved Bruno, who loved only music, and, finding themselves eaten up by love unreturned, had fled. It must be one of these many unfortunate lovers who had, consciously or unconsciously, taken Bruno’s voice out of jealousy. This left Julio with the unenviable task of interrogating Bruno’s exes and an unknowable number of fans, but it was better to think this way than to assume that he, Julio, could have possibly done harm, when all he wanted was to hear Bruno’s voice again, soft and sweet and unaccompanied by the sullen rattle of someone else’s garbage. It was better to think this way than to accept that Bruno himself might be pining after a lover lost or a lover not yet found, that Bruno’s voice had fled him of its own will, that Bruno’s voice had all along been the curse and now the links of the curse had weakened, corroded, and snapped at last, leaving Bruno free to love. To love and to recede, like the tide ebbing along the greasy black backs of the uncooperative oysters of New York, into normalcy.

He hurried away from these thoughts, tearing his feet up from the asphalt, sending sparks into the dim and dusty air. The lights of Hollywood hummed a warning in his ears. Far to the north, fires were already burning.

When he returned to the villa, he found Bruno lying along the velvet chaise, song notes already ankle-deep on the rugs, Versace on the floor, humming to himself and filling the ice bucket with bits of trash.

“Hey, man,” Bruno said, aloud. Garbage poured from his mouth into the bucket. “I was thinking we could do some art with all of this junk. You know, like modern art. A sculpture. ‘One Man’s Trash.’”

“Don’t tear up your throat more than you already have,” Julio said. He started to make Bruno some tea. A certain false health witch of California peddled various dusts and goops, and Julio’s father drank cascara, but for Bruno, this Bruno, slumped and languid on the chaise, Julio prepared a mild high-elevation oolong, brewed from the tenderest leaves of young tea shrubs grown in hidden, guarded gardens, hand-plucked, hand-spread, and hand-folded, packed with antioxidants, riddles, and the mingled aromas of fermentation and geraniums. This tea required precision. Julio set a timer on his phone.

“It’s not like I’m going to be singing again any time soon, anyway,” Bruno said, with unexpected sullenness. Morsels of plastic, paper, and ash fell into the bucket.

Julio felt the pain of his heart. He went to the chaise, knelt, set the bucket aside and took Bruno’s face in his hands.

Bruno’s mouth formed the shape of his name but emitted no sound.

“Are you in love, Mr. Mars?” Julio asked.

He had noted the contents of the songs written for Adam, bursting with a painfully naïve bluster, promising classic cars, diamonds, strawberry champagne, high thread counts, good times, and eternal devotion.

Bruno only looked at him and did not answer.

“Tell me,” Julio said. “It may be the key to all of this. If it was a misunderstanding, I am sure we can clear things up. I will send them flowers. The best and the biggest. If they did this to hurt you, then I will, naturally, take care of business.”

“Julio,” Bruno said, and whatever it was he had coughed up, he kept it hidden in his mouth. “What are you even saying?”

“Well, is there someone?” Julio said. “That girl you met in Badalona, the one with whom you walked along the sea after the concert. The boy from Waikiki, the one who lived down the street and played the sax; yes, your brother did tell me about him, that time when we all drank too much tequila. That barista in Modesto, you seemed to like her. Yes, I know,” he said, forestalling the comment building below Bruno’s widening eyes, “it was a meeting of only a few minutes. But connections can form in seconds. Not her either, then, though her latte art easily revealed the strength of her soul. She would have kept you content for all your days. Someone you glimpsed, perhaps. A face in a crowd. They looked kind; they were gone in a flash; you were enchanted nonetheless. You don’t know their name, that’s fine, just tell me what they looked like. I beg you, Bruno, tell me, so that I can fix this.”

“There’s no one,” Bruno said, sounding increasingly like he was talking around a mouthful of marbles, “no one, nothing. You’re hurting my face.”

“For real?” Julio said.

He became aware of his disbelief, and of the sweat on his palms, damp against Bruno’s skin, of the pulse jumping rapidly beneath his touch, the tendons of the neck and the slight ridges of the windpipe. He saw that Bruno’s lips were closed tightly, holding back the garbage in his mouth, or perhaps words, perhaps one word, the name of the one who had stricken him.

He felt the white-hot sting of fury as it lashed him, vicious as a whip. The blow left him smarting and warm.

In all things, Julio tried to be careful, to follow the example of Diego de Orellana, who was slow to anger and measured in every movement. He was not careful now. He was seized by a madness borne of desperation. Never mind his snort of derision about the foolish, childish suggestion of Adam Levine: this was America, and Bruno was in show business. Why should not the cure be as saccharine as the sugar-sweet veneer of niceness laid atop everything, as beautiful and glossy and brittle as the surface of a candy apple? The rosiness of candy apples was in Bruno’s cheeks now, as Julio leaned forward and pressed their mouths together.

The initial touch seared him like lightning. He felt Bruno’s jaw tighten and tense beneath his fingers, felt the shock ripple through them both.

Bruno made a noise in his throat, and Julio withdrew long enough for Bruno to release the contents of his mouth into his cupped hands. The light sparkled vaguely across speckled and jagged planes before Bruno’s fingers closed over them. Julio did not spare them a second glance. Finding Bruno’s mouth suddenly empty, he thought it only logical to fill it, licking his way inside. He heard the trinkets tumbling into the carpet and the scattered papers as Bruno seized beneath him, clutched at his shoulders, sucked at his tongue. He did taste a bit like garbage, though, in truth, the taste hardly registered. There was only heat, racing through him like a pyroclastic flow. Julio’s single, all-consuming thought was a name: _Bruno, Bruno, Bruno_. He knew then, all at once, that he would do anything for Bruno: take a bullet, catch a grenade, stop trains in their tracks, drag airplanes from the sky. He would lay waste to whole cities. There would be no survivors.

This time, when he pulled back, he found himself panting as though he had been running.

He was in darkness. He opened his eyes, surprised to find that he had closed them at all. Beneath him, charmingly disheveled, the neck of his fine robe pulled back over shining skin and crumpled in Julio’s grasping fist, Bruno was staring at him with something approaching terror. The sight of this, of Bruno lying stock-still, barely daring to move, to breathe, to speak, was like the cold water of the Hudson all over again. Julio felt the icy seaweed-slither of the witch of the Hudson’s fingers against his throat, strangling him.

“Julio,” Bruno said, dazed. Then he reached into his mouth, which had been so soft and willing, and extracted a small glowing disc of amber containing a fossil.

The iciness began to spread and radiate, bringing numbness to his fingers, his stomach. He had believed, vibrantly and for several spectacular moments, that Bruno’s voice would be saved by the power of love: true love, as Adam had said. He had felt it in the core of his being, molten.

“It didn’t work,” he said.

“What didn’t work?” Bruno said. His gaze sharpened. “What didn’t work?” he repeated, sitting up, finding the bucket. The noise of falling garbage, beating a staccato tempo against the smooth plastic of the bucket, was not unlike that of heavy rain against glass. Julio felt each _plink_ within his ribs, reverberating there, piling up on the scale and tipping the balance of his achievements toward failure.

“Sorry,” Julio said, releasing Bruno’s robe and jerking back so quickly that he fell backwards onto his ass. He leapt to his feet. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Hey, wait a second,” Bruno said. “Hey, wait. Hang on.”

“Will you accept a verbal resignation,” Julio said, turning away from Bruno’s wild eyes, “or would you prefer it in writing?”

“No, fuck that, fuck that,” Bruno said. He grabbed at Julio and caught his hand. “Why did you do that?” Julio swiveled reluctantly and saw Bruno’s throat working as he struggled to speak. He was no longer aiming for the bucket; he was just staring at Julio and talking, fingers tightening across Julio’s knuckles as he tugged and metal fragments fell from his mouth like hail. “Why did you kiss me?”

Abruptly and awfully, Julio realized he was no longer able to speak the truth.

“It was a remedy, Mr. Mars,” he said, with the same false lightness that had imbued his voice at lunch now rising up to choke him. “Just something I saw in a book. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try. I didn't mean to—I—sorry to have startled you.”

His phone began to vibrate and chime in his pocket: Bruno’s tea was ready.

“Let me get that tea for you,” he said, with unbearable smoothness.

“Okay,” Bruno said. A yellow bread clip fell onto his lap. He let go of Julio’s hand.

Julio woke the next day to a voicemail from his brother Lucero, calling in the early morning hours from Miami after sensing what he jokingly referred to as a disturbance in the Force the night before. Lucero had always been the most sensitive of his six brothers, the most emotionally available and open. He had felt the fraying of Julio’s willpower across the leagues and mountains; he had felt the shadow of the volcano grow long. In closing, he reminded Julio that they were all proud of him, Diego included. He told Julio to be strong. The message cut off with a beep. Julio, with a lump in his throat, simply nodded to himself.

The feelings that had run so hot within him just twelve hours before seemed to have burned through him and vanished; it was as though a crust of black earth had formed over his spirit. He emerged from his room in some trepidation only to have all his fears confirmed: Bruno would barely look at him. The rest of the morning was so awkward that, had Julio dared to speak, he would have offered to resign again. As it was, he no longer trusted his own voice. Bruno texted him his wishes, and Julio fulfilled them one by one in silence.

He was relieved when the Hooligans, Bruno’s band, arrived around noon, piling into the hotel with their instruments for a raucous jam session. Bruno amused himself by chasing them around and around the suite, bellowing at them and firing garbage like projectiles. Then he stood on the chaise, the same chaise where Julio had pushed him down and tasted him and dragged his sweating hands across his chest, and he made it rain: ticket stubs, twist-ties, bottle caps, gumballs, gum wrappers, Monopoly money, the yellow nibs of colored pencils, the burned gold wicks of Yankee candles, still smelling strongly of artificial buttercream, lemon, and Tahitian vanilla.

Julio excused himself with a gesture and returned to his own room to pack.

Some weeks ago, at the start of this trouble, he had emailed Mark Ronson, who was vacationing in Zanzibar with his wife. Mark had also contacted him that morning, having finally resurfaced in Paris. 

 _Sure, why don’t you give me a call?_ he said. _Can chat more at length this wknd. Skype works._

 _Can’t_ , Julio wrote back. _Sorry. Laryngitis._

 _I see,_ Mark said, with several sets of ellipses. Julio resented the insinuation, yet he knew in his gut that he was both a liar and a coward. _Well, if you’re feeling up to it, I’d suggest going to see Keyonne._

Laughter and music filled the air. Bruno was chuckling, riding high on the teasing, wailing slide of Kameron’s trombone. All was as it should be, and yet he, Julio de Orellana, was unsettled and unhappy. He remembered the flicker of dismay Bruno’s eyes, the frown on his lips, his soft and wonderful lips, as Julio stood before him and explained that he was leaving the next day on a short trip. The thought of leaving Bruno was painful, almost as painful as the thought of staying.

Eventually, Bruno had shrugged and returned to plucking at a bass guitar. His brother and drummer, Eric, slapped a stick against a cymbal.

“Don’t worry, Julio,” he said, as the noise faded. “We’ll look after him.”

“You better,” Julio said, every word like gravel, lodging and rasping against the roof of his mouth. “I won’t be here to bail you out.”

“Hell, take the week,” Eric said. “It’s been literally years since you had a real vacation.”

Bruno had flinched at this, unseen by all but Julio.

“Sure,” Julio said, with the same unshakeable languor, “sounds good.”

Grinning at each other, the Hooligans launched into a rendition of the _Carmen Sandiego_ cartoon theme.

_Where in the world is Julio Orellana?_

Julio de Orellana was flying southwards into spring again, headed for the Gulf. There would be no iguana-serpent to greet him, no creature of flesh and blood that he could defeat with aggression and magic. He longed for such an enemy; he knew he would encounter none. He was, moreover, no longer certain of a cure, and his uncertainty nauseated him.

 

In New York, witches abounded and bound themselves into categories, narrowing and honing their powers to fill city niches. There were voice witches and vicinity witches, alderwitches and witches of alder trees, witches of the elements, of earth, sea, and sky, witches of mathematics, and good witches of finances, who used their powers to write newsletters about complex derivatives, and evil witches of finances, who orchestrated Ponzi schemes. Many in the music industry assumed, wrongly, that Bruno Mars wielded the siren’s devastating magic of voice, or that Julio did; in fact, it had been Keyonne Starr, of Jackson, Mississippi, who had leant her power to the recording of Uptown Funk.

When Julio came to see her, leaving Bruno in Los Angeles, comfortably ensconced in the vegan, impeccably configured home of Adam and Behati and surrounded by the buoyant spirits of the Hooligans, Keyonne was still living in the student apartments at the edge of campus in Mississippi State University. She was bouncing her baby daughter, whom many said she had simply sung into existence one day, on her knee and seemed to have been expecting him.

“Heard you comin’,” she explained, as Julio looked at the table set with its two placemats, two sandwiches, and two tall glasses of sweet tea. The baby had her own little plate of pureed vegetables, at which she gurgled then jabbed with a tiny plastic spoon.

Julio sat and drank. He was parched. He gulped until his glass was empty. The sweetness of the tea brought tears to his eyes.

Wordlessly, Keyonne slid him her own untouched glass. She placed the baby in her high chair and went to grab the pitcher from the refrigerator.

Julio drank this dry, too, and then he wiped his lips and wiped his eyes.

“You’re in love,” Keyonne said. “You’re hurtin’ real bad, and you’re in love. Maybe the two are related.”

Julio bit his lips against speech.

“Mark mentioned Bruno was havin’ some trouble of his own,” Keyonne said. She poured herself another glass and started to pour for Julio, too, but he stopped her with a frantic shake of his head.

His thirst had undermined his caution. He reined it in now, but it was already too late: Keyonne had control of his tongue. From it, she coaxed the truth and the story. She received all the details about the curse, all the avenues Julio had tried, all his long and thankless searches. She learned about the taste of Bruno, the salt of his skin, about how Julio had looked at him, in the light pouring in through the windows of the New York penthouse, about how every movement of Bruno was like a song to him, about his deep, heretofore unspoken longing to hear his name on Bruno’s lips, over and over. She heard about his fear that he had laid the curse, that he had gone against his father’s name and his father’s creed and put darkness over light, given himself over to evil; he told to her his brother’s tale about the lengthening shadow of the volcano over the Sonsonate. He wept all the while as Keyonne reeled the story from him, as though first reeling in a fish, and then, methodically, unemotionally, twisting the hook in its throat and pulling from its gulping breathless mouth line after line of silvery fishgut. His tears were cold on his cheeks and fell soundlessly to the table, wetting the backs of his clenched hands.

“My, my,” she said.

“You witch,” Julio said, when he could speak again. The words felt freer, perhaps because Keyonne had tugged them loose, or perhaps because he was no longer speaking of Bruno. He said, “I see now that it is exactly as Acindina Valeria warned me. It _is_ contagious.”

“In a manner of speakin’,” Keyonne said. She laughed at the brief, abortive gesture Julio made, trying to stop her from drinking from the glass his lips had touched, and her baby laughed with her, musically and with delight. “Oh, Julio. You still don’t get it?”

“Get what?” Julio said.

“What Bruno is so scared to tell you,” Keyonne said.

“He doesn’t want to sing anymore,” Julio said, heart beginning to pound. It was the most terrifying possibility. Keyonne shook her head, chuckling. Julio tried again. “He’s dying?”

But Keyonne was still laughing, her eyes crinkling up at the corners.

“It’s good you came to see me,” she said. “You know why that New York witch couldn’t help you?”

“No,” Julio said.

“Because she didn’t understand,” Keyonne said. “Been alive too long. Y’all are like ants to her. Or gerbils. Human emotion is fleetin’, here and gone again. All she can remember is war and famine and the slow roll of time. All she wants to do is protect what’s hers. She’s a glacier carvin’ out a mountain, comin’ to rest in a valley of her own makin'. What rides inside that human-lookin’ shell is a spirit as ancient as the volcano that gives _you_ power. Of course she couldn’t help you. She just couldn’t name the feelin’.”

“What do you mean?” Julio said.

“ _Love_ ,” Keyonne sang, in an arcing arpeggio. The notes settled over Julio, iridescent in the afternoon sunlight, his own personal rainbow. The baby, startled, giggled and clapped her hands, spattering vegetable puree everywhere.

 _Love_ , Julio said, or tried to: the word stuck in his craw. He stared at Keyonne in alarm while she whooped with laughter.

“It’s funny because it’s mutual,” she said. “I promise you, it’s mutual. Don’t be so damn afraid. Sing it out. Say his name.”

Julio shook his head.

“Go on,” Keyonne said. “Don’t be shy.”

It was shockingly difficult to do. There was a sensation of sticking, of a dry papery warmth stopping his throat, then suddenly the sound was wriggling, clawing, unable to be kept back or controlled.

He thought of Bruno then, of the dimming of his eyes he looked away, the silence that fell like a mourning veil between them.

“Bruno,” Julio said, smothered, and as he spoke a lizard, its belly yellow as a lemon, crawled forth from between his lips and fell to the table. It stared up at Julio, solemn and unblinking, with jeweled eyes. Julio turned to Keyonne in horror. “Oh, no,” he said, and coughed up a pebble the size and color of a carob seed. “Son of a—”

“See? Told you so,” Keyonne said, while Julio spat out the bitter taste of a someone else’s cigarette butt, ground out against distant asphalt.

He was Juan José Julio Xóchihua Ciro, seventh son of the wizard Carlos Diego Facundo Xochiteotl de Orellana, grandson of Marisol Yaoxochitl, the enchantress of Ahuachapan, direct descendant of the Lords of the Houses of Obsidian, in whose blood flowed, slow-moving and devastating, the fire of the Mountain, the flame of the Lighthouse of the Pacific, and he had been enchanted. It had happened so slowly, so subtly, that he had not even noticed. He remembered Bruno’s song: _Run, run, run away, run away, baby, before I put my spell on you_. He had laughed. They had laughed together.

“What do I do?” he asked Keyonne. Her daughter, chasing after the lizard with chubby fingers, trilled and burbled at the sudden appearance of a pistachio shell, a shriveled golden raisin, and several shreds of withered, yellowing salad leaves. “How can I fix this?”

“Ain’t nothin’ to fix,” Keyonne said. “Go home, Julio Orellana, and tell him how you feel.”

She gave him some water first, though, to clear his throat. They took the lizard out together with her daughter and released it into the grass. Julio was certain nothing good would come of this, that the lizard would be eaten by some predatory creature or crushed into paste by a passing car. He offered to take it to New York, to Professor Kale. He offered to buy a cage and some crickets. Keyonne only laughed at him while her daughter grabbed fistfuls of grass.

“He’s a magic little guy,” she said. “He’ll be okay.”

He left them there, kneeling in the grass and sunshine.

“I’ll come sing for Bruno and Mark again sometime,” Keyonne said, in parting. “You be brave, now. It’ll all work out.”

Of this, Julio was not sure. He took the week Eric had offered him, and then he took two weeks more, returning to Miami. He had dinner with each of his six brothers in turn, and with their children and their wives, partners, and flings, communicating with smiles and gestures only. They each had their own theories and suggestions as to his condition, and many tried cures, medicinal or magical; these Julio bore with patience, until at last his brothers declared their ideas exhausted, and together they visited the grave of their mother, ill-fated María Amaranta Lucía de las Lágrimas, she of the unceasing tears. Later in his time of exile, he walked unspeaking, unencumbered, and unwary along the Biscayne Bay, all the way to the Ragged Keys. The iguana-serpent had neither signed nor sworn a truce, but it was fundamentally lazy: having returned to rest, it was unlikely to wake again for another thousand years. Climate change and the rising waters might shorten this respite considerably, but the serpent was, essentially, no longer Julio’s problem.

 _His_ problem had returned to New York, where rumors were swirling. Paparazzi photos had emerged, of Bruno in the company of a mystery woman with glittering cheekbones and acrylic nails like claws, of Bruno looking worn and tired, of Bruno drinking smoothies, of Bruno and the Hooligans dancing on tables, of Bruno strutting down the Eighth Avenue in something as unexciting as blue jeans and a plain white t-shirt; this was, of course, exciting in and of itself.

 _BRUNO WALKS THE WALK_ , said one caption, _BUT WON’T TALK THE TALK. Bruno Tight-Lipped About Concert Cancellation. Bruno Mars 2015 Tour Dreams Over?_

_Bruno gives us the slip. Bruno Mars in hiding._

_WHERE’S BRUNO?_

He didn’t start to worry until Eric texted him. _Hey man is Bruno with you?_

 _No,_ Julio replied. He cast a crazed glance around the beach house, taking stock: shoes here, coat there, suitcase on its side by the closet. He could be packed and ready in minutes.

 _U guys okay?_ Eric said. There was a long pause where he seemed to be typing and typing and typing, or typing and deleting and typing again, and Julio held his breath and waited with growing panic. Finally, Eric spoke. _look maybe its not my place to say, but Bruno’s been sad as shit since you left, man_

“Oh, God,” Julio said; the pain was immense. He crouched down to ride it out. Just then, something stabbed him in the gums, and he dug two shards of a measuring tape out from between his teeth. Eric was still typing, but when the next message came, all it said was, _anyway let me know if you hear from him, thanks man_

He was still holding his phone in his hand when it started to vibrate and strobe in colors he had never selected, some colors, indeed, that he had never seen before.

Before he could even figure out how to answer the call, his father was looking up at him from between his fingers.

“Juan José. Your friend is here,” he said.

Over Diego’s shoulder, he could see the white plaster of the kitchen in his old family home, and standing up against it, like a prisoner before a firing squad lamenting his refusal of the blindfold, his brother Lucero, looking sick with tension. Just beside him, in an electric blue silk suit printed with persimmons and bird of paradise flowers, a blood-red amaryllis jammed in his button-hole, fiddling with the silver edges of his cuffs, was Bruno Mars.

He looked up as Diego spoke, and his eyes were dull and tired.

“That’s my boss, Dad,” Julio said, cringing away from Bruno’s blind stare, away from the way Bruno started forward at the sound of his voice, the way his hands fell away from his cuffs and formed into fists at his sides. “That’s Mr. Mars.” He kept the pieces of broken tacks and crumbling yellowed receipts in his mouth, pressed carefully against the inside of his left cheek.

“Whoever he is, you must come get him, Juan José,” Diego said. “He cannot stay here.”

But when Julio arrived, blown in on the evening salt wind, frantic and panting, he found Bruno and his father—Lucero was in the kitchen still, drinking heavily of his father’s store of mezcal—standing in the backyard amid the fruit trees, peacefully enough. Bruno was small beside Diego, a slight, graceful silhouette dwarfed by something resembling a bull or the craggy, cratered form of the volcano; in his youth, Diego had also been called the Lighthouse of the Pacific. But where he had once worn his hair curling into the sky like the black smoke of a burning torch, now his head was bald. The light struck it like the corona of the sun as it rose over the earth each morning.

A second glow lit the darkness, a red dot. His father was smoking again. His refusal to quit was something that had moved his wife to tears, though in all fairness, La Llorosa had been moved to tears over many matters, large and small. As a child, Julio had often joined in her lamentations. He could hear the echo of her sobs in his ears, distant as the Milky Way, and he certainly felt like crying now. He wondered how long Bruno had been there, and he wondered whether Bruno had spoken of their first meeting, which had taken place not long after the death of his mother, who had died not of a broken heart at the estrangement of her husband and her youngest son, as all expected, but of an aneurysm.

His meeting with Bruno, too, had run contrary to expectation. It had not been by chance, neither a glimpse in a crowd nor a sudden summoning. It had been a job interview, where Julio had arrived exactly on time, his resume lying flat and passive in its folder, his hair slicked severely to the side like the crown feathers of an arrogant and soaring falcon turning into the wind, his tie the dark green of a rubber plant, precisely knotted, and demonstrated his knowledge both of the music industry and of the syncopated rhythms of New York City. They had liked each other then, a liking that had only grown. He had never even sensed his peril.

Now, slender beside the black mass of his father, Bruno blazed like a star. The effect was not entirely imaginary. Here, in his corner of the subdivision, Diego de Orellana parted the veil of light pollution so that the stars in heaven shone clearly down upon his orchard, which seemed both to stretch on as far as the eye could see and come to a stop at the edge of the street, where his mailbox rose beside a sturdy thatch palm, heavy already with arching clusters of white flowers. Julio wondered what Bruno was looking at—the garden infinite or the ordinary backyard—until his feet scraped on the gravel and he saw Bruno looking at him, a look that he had only once before seen Bruno direct at his own reflection in a full-length mirror, spangled from head to foot and totally absorbed in himself, moments before striding on stage. It was a look that said Julio was the only person alive in the world, the only person who mattered, the axis around which the whole of Bruno’s universe was revolving. It was a look that almost buckled his knees.

“Julio,” Bruno said. Something bright and golden spun into the dirt by his feet. He did not seem to notice it, though it had not escaped the quick eye of Diego de Orellana, who nudged at it with his sandal.

“What are you doing here?” Julio said. He knew he must maintain an economy of language to avoid letting either Bruno or his father know that he had been similarly ensorcelled. He spoke slowly, too, so as not to bite down upon anything living or sharp. If the garbage were paper, he would swallow it down.

Bruno had no such qualms. “You listed this address in your emergency contacts,” he said, littering Julio’s father’s orchard with trash.

Above him, Diego’s eyebrows lifted, almost to the top of his bald head.

“Come home,” Bruno said. “Please.”

“I’m on vacation,” Julio said, enunciating with care. “I have days. Stored up.”

“You’re not on vacation,” Bruno said. “You’re a wizard. You’re _my_ wizard. You don’t get vacation. You don’t get to run away to fucking Florida just before concert season and leave your master under the shadow of a curse. You don’t get to kiss me like that and pretend it was nothing. I talked to Adam. I talked to Mark. You—”

“Stop, stop,” Diego said. “Stop, Mr. Mars or Mercury or whoever you are. You are contaminating my orchard. If you must make a speech, I beg you to go inside, where I have both a compost pail and a nineteen-gallon trash can.”

For a moment it looked like Bruno would ignore him; then he nodded. He came toward Julio, chin tucked, shoulders squared, bracing, it seemed, to tackle him to the ground. Instead he grabbed Julio’s hand and used it to pull him back into the kitchen where Lucero jumped, exclaimed, and sloshed mezcal onto the countertop. He kept pulling, taking Julio back through the house, though it stretched and oozed around them in protest, and time ran down the walls.

“Mr. Orellana, I am taking your son back to New York, thank you and goodnight,” he shouted. Garbage pelted the floor.

Distantly, Lucero mumbled a farewell. Julio, of course, said nothing.

Diego met them outside the front door, opening it just as Bruno reached for it; he had circled around the house either through the yard or through the fabric of reality, which was for him little more than a curtain. He stepped in, and Julio stepped back, dragging Bruno with him.

The silence was long and painful as they looked at one another. Finally, Diego said to Julio, “My boy, there is much to discuss about that sorry business with the iguana-serpent, but I can see that you are busy with your own affairs.” His moustache twitched with the barest, dimmest recollection of a smile. His tone was gently ironic. “Perhaps now is not a good time for you to talk. Come to me again when you can. Delighted, of course, to make your acquaintance, master of wizards.” He extended his hand, and Bruno shook it, and then he moved aside.

They burst onto the sidewalk hand in hand and stood gasping in the darkness. The door swung shut and was locked behind them, and the air seemed to lighten. Julio tried to shrug away, but Bruno would not release him.

“Don’t you dare,” Bruno said, “evaporate, or teleport, or dissolve into a flock of birds.”

“I can’t do any of those things, maje,” Julio said, startled, and trash fell out of his mouth and spilled across the concrete.

They stared at each other.

“Julio,” Bruno said, hushed. “Julio, does this mean—”

Behind Bruno’s wide eyes, every window of his father’s house was blazing with light; he could hear the wind shifting restlessly through the orchard.

“Not here,” he said.

Bruno’s hand squeezed his. “Sure,” he said.

They returned to the beach house, where Julio made pasta and scampi, in part because he needed to get Bruno to let go of his hand and in part because he had heard Bruno’s stomach growling. He did it also to occupy himself and to keep at bay the questions that he could feel scratching at his throat. How long had Bruno been in Miami, for instance, and how long had he been searching for Julio? How worried and desperate had he become, to seek him at his father’s house, and how had he found his way on foot to the sanctuary of the former wizard of the Sonsonate, that was once the Centzunat, the Land of Four Hundred Waters, when the paths there were obscured to all but his sons and the American postal service?

He served the scampi, placed at the center of a neatly twirled nest of linguine, and poured white wine, and they sat in silence at opposite ends of the table, neither eating nor drinking, looking everywhere but at each other. He could still feel the phantom clutch of Bruno’s hand.

His phone pinged, and he glanced at it in surprise.

 _Julio, you are everything to me_ , Bruno said. He didn’t look up. He was typing carefully. _My life would literally be garbage without you, and I am shit scared I am going to fuck everything up and lose you forever._

Julio’s mouth was empty, but he swallowed anyway.

“Me too,” he said, ruining his scampi with what looked like the corner of a mouse-gnawed fortune cookie and three-quarters of a mothball. “God, me too.”

Bruno looked at him, desolate. _Maybe I already have._

“No,” Julio said.

“Your dad said—” Bruno pushed his plate aside before anything could fall into it, but nothing did. Julio inhaled sharply and tried to get his attention, but he plowed on, oblivious. “He said I was keeping you from your destiny.”

“ _You_ are my destiny,” Julio said. He was still spitting splinters of unwanted knick-knacks. He lurched to his feet. Bruno did, too.

“He said you’d say that,” Bruno said. His face was red.

“Did he say that I’d say this?” Julio said, stung. God damn his clairvoyant father. “That I worship the ground you walk on? That I love you? That my heart desires you above all things? That you have bound me to you, mind, body, and soul, and that the spell laid upon me will never be broken?”

His torrent of romantic clichés continued unabated, but the flow of literal garbage choked to a stop. By the end of his speech, Julio was only shouting, not gargling, his voice ringing out clear and unimpeded over the sound of the waves.

“No foolin’?” Bruno said softly. He was still red in the face, but he was smiling now, a smile bright with relief, a smile that trembled.

“ _Mi luz_ ,” Julio said, “come here.”

The bed was unmade and the sheets merely jersey, but they crashed into it like waves against a rocky shore, and then Julio rolled Bruno over and unmade him, too, hungrier for him than he had ever been in his life. They abandoned all notions of time, of reality, of the constellations rotating lazily overhead. Julio forgot everything but the touch of Bruno’s hands, the warmth of Bruno’s limbs intertwined with his own, the soft wet heat of Bruno’s mouth and of his body, both of which opened eagerly for the press of Julio’s tongue and fingers: it was spring again, and all the world was in flower. He placed his lips near Bruno’s ear and whispered fiercely to him of his love.

“Julio, Julio, Julio,” Bruno said, and covered the pillow with opals.

He woke the next day to find the bed empty, but his heart had settled within him, and he felt too peaceful to be frightened. Also, he had seen Bruno’s fine suit lying heaped on the floor where they had dismembered it and shed it, piece by piece. He lay there a moment, warm and sleepy, tracing the patterns of dust on the ceiling with his eyes, reliving the memory of Bruno in his arms.

When he entered the living room, he saw Bruno standing naked outside on the deck, observing the progress of dawn as it rose slowly over the bay, peeling back the shadows of buildings and boats from the water.

“Julio,” Bruno said, and his voice rang out in the morning sun, shining golden on his upturned face. Something bright and sparkling fell from his lips; he caught it, easily, in the palm of his hand and raised it to the light.

It was a diamond with a yellow heart.

“Will you wear it?” Bruno said in the stillness that followed, and the only thing on his breath now was softness and music, and in his eyes there rose a wild singing hope.

“No,” Julio said, already putting his arms around him. “It’s flashy as hell.”

“Okay,” Bruno said, unperturbed, and even as he smiled against Julio’s mouth he slipped the diamond into his pocket. A week later he had it set into a band for his little finger, a signet, which he never removed and frequently commented upon, in interviews and in private, and on clear nights would hold aloft against the city lights and the distant moon, while the lunar-dust made for him and his little ring a glittering halo, and Julio stooped to kiss the whorl of hair at his temple and whispered magic in his ear.

 


End file.
